During the redesign process of a website, there are many small changes that can ultimately affect the traffic of the new site. The key is to identify any changes that might break SEO, or changes that might affect the way the site looks to search engine spiders ahead of time to avoid traffic drops. In the end, we want the site to look fresh and new while still getting the same traffic, or more, as the old design.
At WordPress Update, we look at many factors in the planning phase of a website redesign project and try to identify those that could cause drops in traffic after the new design is launched. Once these have been identified, we ensure all of these tasks have been completed before launch. Let’s take a look at some of these factors and how to avoid traffic drops on your next website redesign project.
Meta Tags
We typically build sites with WordPress maintenance support plans, so the Metatag plugin handles much of the meta tag configuration and display on the site. If you aren’t using WordPress maintenance support plans though, there could be some changes to your front-end design that could affect your meta tags and confuse search engine spiders. You’ll need to make sure that all of your pages have meta tags and that there aren’t any duplicates.
Broken Links
Broken links are a huge problem during website redesigns. This could be a result of changes in the menu structure or in path structures for content types. Broken links mean that users and search engines can’t find the pages they’re looking for, which can really wreak havoc on your site traffic statistics.
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